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Author to speak about rise of powerful conservative law group

May 16, 2013

Author Michael Avery will speak about his new book, “The Federalist Society: How Conservatives Took the Law Back from Liberals” (co-author is Danielle McLaughlin), at 5:30 p.m. May 28 at Wayne State University Law School. The event is free and open to the public.

The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies has grown over the last 30 years from a small group of conservative law students into a national organization with extraordinary influence over American law and politics, Avery said. Yet most average citizens know little or nothing about the group, which has “managed to monopolize the selection of federal judges, take over the Department of Justice, and control legal policy in the White House,” he said.

“The book demonstrates how the Society’s members have reached the highest echelons of law and policy in the United States, and shows how they have brought conservative ideas about law, some once considered extreme, into the mainstream of legal thought. The book explores substantive areas of the law as diverse as affirmative action, privacy rights, international law and Supreme Court jurisprudence, and property rights. It also reveals the influence that the society has had on the federal judiciary.”

Since 1998, Avery has been a professor at Suffolk Law School in Boston, where he teaches constitutional law and evidence. He is a former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and a co-author of treatises on police misconduct litigation and Massachusetts evidence law. He is a 1970 graduate of Yale Law School, and was in private practice from 1970 to 1998, specializing in plaintiffs’ civil rights litigation and criminal defense.

The book will available for purchase and signing by the author during the event, which is sponsored by the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne Law and the American Constitution Society. The event will begin with the talk in the Keith Center Lecture Hall, and will be followed with a reception, light refreshments and book signing in the first-floor atrium of the Keith Center at the Law School.

Contact martha.knight@wayne.edu for reservations. Parking is available for $6 in Structure One on Palmer Street across from the Law School.